Interesting Links for 28-02-2016

[andrewducker]

Petition to make labelling food as vegetarian and/or vegan as legal requirement

(tags: food vegetarian petition uk )

Why Digital Maps Are Inaccurate in China

(tags: china maps )

Pentium? Core i5? Core i7? Making sense of Intel’s convoluted CPU lineup

(tags: cpu computer Technology )

The Company That Makes $70 Million Selling Random Stuff on Amazon

(tags: amazon sales business )

Curiosity Depends on What You Already Know

(tags: learning brain psychology )

Are pure mathematics and physics really that different?

(tags: history mathematics philosophy )

Why people oppose same-sex marriage

(tags: lgbt marriage relationships homophobia )

You all know that the left/right brain divide between logic and art is complete bollocks, right?

(tags: brain myths )

Comments

re: petition

[darkoshi]

I'm glad that American food products don't use E numbers in the labels. That would make it a lot more difficult for people like me. I'm all for listing the actual names of the ingredients.

While I'd like it if all products were labeled as to whether they were vegan/vegetarian or not, it would be difficult to implement. In many cases, producers may not know if the sources they use are veg*. Or the sources may sometimes be veg* and sometimes not, even when they're buying from the same supplier. So the regulations would need to involve the whole production chain, including out-of-country suppliers.

Companies might avoid labeling their products as veg*, even though they may be so, just to avoid potential lawsuits over labeling mistakes.

That's not even considering the possible differences in opinion over whether a particular ingredient should be considered vegan/vegetarian. For example, l-cysteine.... well, shucks. According to Wikipedia, l-cysteine isn't generally obtained from human hair after all, but rather poultry feathers and hog hair. I was ok with it being from human hair, but not the latter.